First published through the Oak Spring Garden Foundation on Google Arts and Culture, 2017.
In 1866, nearly two thirds of the Austrian population depended on subsistence farming, yet about half of the usable land in Austria-Hungarywas owned by a very small number of aristocrats. Economic disparity between the upper and lower classes had been intensifying the population’s resentment of their government for decades before this print was produced, and their indignation had been bubbling up in revolutionary and separatist parties.
Frightened by the prospect of revolution, the Austrian government fought to uphold the monarchy, complying with their people just enough to sate their need for change.
Because of this, the Minister of the Interior in the 1850s, Baron Alexander von Bach, conceded to abolish Austria’s institutionalized serfdom, creating economic freedom that gave rise to a period of urbanization and successful economic and industrial development that was unprecedented in Austria.
This advertisement for agricultural supplies provides an interesting perspective into Austrian political and social developments in 1866, promoting an assortment of iron and steel products that would not have been cheaply or easily produced without the 1850’s industrial boom, and targeting both aristocratic landowners and Austria’s larger masses of newly-freed servants.
Without the confines of strict social hierarchy, Austria was economically thriving but socially struggling; there were fewer guidelines dictating social order, and it lead to violent conflicts and a rise in nationalism in the years following Bach’s emancipation edict. Because of these social qualms, there were few enterprises that found success across all socioeconomic boundaries. Agriculture was the exception; dependence on agriculture was the common field that connected both freed serfs and the economic elite, and this pamphlet, designed and produced by a business in Vienna, capitalized on it.
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